Xbox One X And Everything Else Microsoft Showed At E3 2017

1 year ago

Microsoft kicked off their E3 2017 press conference by officially revealing their beefy new console, the $499 Xbox One X. WITNESS.

The new console may have been Microsoft’s big hardware announcement, but they actually didn’t spend too much time talking about the device itself. With the announcement out of the way, their focus quickly shifted focus to games. So many games! They showed trailer after trailer, with a few longer demos breaking up the machine-gun pace.

Let’s run it all down.

They started with the Xbox One X, Coming November 7.

After months of hype, Microsoft opened by unveiling the Xbox One X, which I hope everyone begins abbreviating as “XOX.” We can pronounce it “Zox.”

We already know a lot about the Xbox One X’s specs, so the big news at E3 was the release date and price. It’ll be out on November 7, 2017, and will cost $499.

Backward Compatibility Will Soon Include Original Xbox Games

Microsoft also announced they’re expanding their backward compatibility program to include Xbox games. Phil Spencer said that over half of Xbox One owners have played a backward compatible game. I wonder how many of those were Red Dead Redemption?

A Bunch Of Games Are Getting Xbox One X Updates

Near the end of the show Phil Spencer announced that Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, Killer Instinct, Halo Wars 2 and Minecraft will get 4k updates for Xbox One X for free, along with 30 other titles that’ll get free Xbox One X updates including FFXV, RE7, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and Rocket League.

Forza Motorsport 7 Will Run Pretty Well On Xbox One X

The first game Microsoft showed off was Forza Motorsport 7, which runs at native 4k resolution and a “rock solid” 60fps. It looked more or less like a racing game, but having played Forza Horizon 3 at a higher frame rate on PC, it’s definitely nice that this one’ll also run at 60fps. It’s out on October 3 on Xbox One and Windows PC, “Holiday 2017″ on Xbox One X.

Metro Exodus is coming out next year, looks good.

The next Metro game will be out on Xbox One X, and presumably on other systems as well. Just based on the demo, the new game looks like it could be open world, or at least semi open-world. Which should be interesting. Might be time to go replay the first two…

We Got Our First Look At Assassin’s Creed: Origins

Man, I’m just looking forward to a new Assassin’s Creed game, whether or not it has giant Egyptian snakes. This game has been leaking for a while now, but now it’s confirmed: the next Assassin’s Creed will be set in ancient Egypt. It’ll launch on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on October 17.

In addition to the announcement trailer, Ubisoft showed a pretty good-looking demo of the game, which you can see above. (Ethan wrote a more detailed breakdown of the demo here.) It had sneaking, stabbing, and most important of all…

NO MINIMAP IN THE CORNER OF THE SCREEN. (!!!!!!)

Deep Rock Galactic looks like a first-person Starship Troopers.

Or more accurately, it looks sort of like a first-person Helldivers.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will be an Xbox One ‘console launch exclusive.’

The creator of the popular PC “It’s Basically Battle Royale” game Battlegrounds came out to announce that the game will be a console launch exclusive on Xbox One. It’ll arrive in late 2017.

State Of Decay 2 Is Coming Spring 2018.

The new trailer for State of Decay 2 doesn’t indicate how the game will be different from the first one, beyond being bigger and better looking. However, the first game is really good, so that’s not such a bad thing.

Minecraft is going fully multi-platform.

The folks at Mojang say Minecraft will soon have complete cross-play between “tablets, VR, Windows 10 PCs and consoles.” There’ll also be a 4K version of the game for Xbox One X, which they showed off in the trailer above.

And Now For A Bunch Of Trailers They Ran Back To Back:

Dragon Ball FighterZ Is About What You’d Expect.

It’s a Dragon Ball Z fighting game. I know our Youtube thumbnail has a space before the Z, but I really want this game to be called Dragon Ball Fighterz.

The Darwin Project looks like a cartoonish competitive survival game.

Black Desert is coming to Xbox One.

The MMO Black Desert Online will make its console debut on Xbox One. I still probably won’t play it, but I will continue to appreciate how amazing all the characters look.

Ashen Looks Like A Somber, Ragdoll Dark Souls.

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm Goes Back In Time

Super Lucky’s Tale Leaves VR Behind, Coming November 7

I’m not sure if this game will be nearly as interesting without the VR wow factor, but you never know.

Sea of Thieves Looks Like A Lot Of Fun.

Microsoft slowed down for a minute to show off some neat looking gameplay from Sea of Thieves, Rare’s upcoming open-world online pirate game. In the demo, a team of players followed a map to hunt down some treasure, running into some trouble along the way. Looks great.

Crackdown 3 Hopefully Features A Lot Of Terry Crews

The intro video for Crackdown 3 featured Terry Crews screaming energetically at the camera, which, I really hope he’s in the game a lot. Preferably yelling at Andy Samberg while holding a bunch of cute kittens. The game itself looks like multiplayer Crackdown, and will hopefully be better than Crackdown 2 was.

The Orcs in Shadow of War Look More Charming Than Ever.

Honestly, I’m just psyched to watch orcs smack-talk one another. I would be cool with it if the entire game were just cutscenes of smacktalk. The game looks fun, but that big dumb orc stole the show. (Video via Golem.de.)

Ori And The Will Of The Wisps Looks Gorgeous

If you’re going to bring the composer onstage to play a game’s soundtrack on piano, you could do worse than bringing Gareth Coker out to play music from a new Ori game. Come for the well designed Metroidvania, stay for the buckets of tears you’ll cry within the first ten minutes.

The show closed with BioWare’s fantastic looking Anthem.

BioWare ended the show by showing off their new game Anthem running on an Xbox One. It’s a multiplayer game where you define your combat role by the exosuit you wear. It looks gorgeous, with a massive open world. More or less a third-person Destiny with a much more ambitious open world and bestiary. Strong note to go out on.

Finally, here’s a helpful list of all the games Microsoft showed at the event and which ones will be exclusive to Xbox One:

Anthem (Non-exclusive)

The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti (Console launch exclusive)

Ashen (Console launch exclusive)

Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Non-exclusive)

Black Desert (Console launch exclusive)

Code Vein (Non-exclusive)

Crackdown 3 (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

Cuphead (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

The Darwin Experiment (Console launch exclusive)

Deep Rock Galactic (Console launch exclusive)

Dragon Ball Fighter Z (Non-exclusive)

Forza Motorsport 7 (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

The Last Night (Console launch exclusive)

Life Is Strange (Non-exclusive)

Metro Exodus (Non-exclusive)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (Non-exclusive)

Minecraft (Non-exclusive)

Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (Console launch exclusive)

Sea of Thieves (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

State of Decay 2 (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

Super Lucky’s Tale (Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive)

Tacoma (Console exclusive)

Phew! That does it for Microsoft. Hell of a lot of games, eh?

We’ll be back later tonight for Bethesda’s press conference (full E3 press conference schedule here), and will be covering E3 all week with news, liveblogs, podcasts, videos, and spicy tweets. Stay tuned.